Heliothis peltigera

Heliothis peltigera ([Denis & Schiffermüller], 1775)

Pl. 1, fig. 4; male genitalia Pl. 4, fig. 23; female genitalia Pl. 8, fig. 39.

Noctua peltigera [Denis & Schiffermüller], 1775, Ank. Eines Syst. Werkes von den Schmett. Der Wienergegend: 89 (TL.: [Austria]: Vienna district).

Synonymy: Phalaena (Bombyx) alphea Cramer, 1780; Phalaena (Noctua) florentina Esper, [1788]; Phalaena (Noctua) charmione Stoll, 1790; Phalaena (Noctua) scutigera Borkhausen, 1792; Phalaena straminea Donovan, 1793; Heliothis peltigera f. clarissima Turati, 1924; Chloridea peltigera var. insulata Navas, 1924.

References: Bienert 1870 (Heliothis Peltigera); Christoph 1873 (Heliothis Peltiger); Schwingenschuss 1938 (Chloridea peltigera); Kalali 1976 (Chloridea peltigera); Modarres Awal 1994, 1997, 1999 (Chloridea (= Heliothis) peltigera), Hacker & Kautt 1999 (Heliothis peltigera); Hacker & Meineke 2001 (Heliothis peltigera); Gutleb & Wiesser 2001 (Heliothis peltigera); Hacker 2001 (Heliothis peltigera); Ebert & Hacker 2002 (Heliothis peltigera).

Bionomics: Multivoltine, throughout the year, probably bivoltine with summer aestivation (Kravchenko et al. 2005). Moths flying from January to December. Larvae are polyphagous, feed on 49 species of herbaceous plants, shrubs and trees of 13 botanical families, prefer Asteraceae, Fabaceae, Malvaceae, Lamiaceae and Solanaceae. The species is a well-known pest in fields and gardens but is less destructive than Helicoverpa armigera. Heliothis peltigera inhabits the Mediterranean evergreen sclerophyllous forest zone and various kinds of subtropical open lands, usually modifed by agriculture or gardens up to elevation 3300 m. It is a wellknown migratory species in the Mediterranean Basin and Near and Middle East. Eastward, it extends to the Indian Subcontinent, the Himalaya region, Tibet and the mountain chains of the former West Turkistan, south to all Arabian Peninsula and East Africa (Hacker 2001).

Distribution: Palaeosubtropic-Paleotropical. North and East Africa, Europe (in the north – migrant), Near East, Caucasus, Transcaucasia, Central Asia, Kazakhstan, China (including Tibet), north India, Nepal, South- East Asia. – In Iran (Pl. 10, fig. 52) occurs everywhere except eastern provinces.

Material examined: 396 specimens from provinces West Azerbaijan, East Azerbaijan, Ardebil, Guilan, Mazandaran, Golestan, Khorasan, Semnan, Tehran, Qom, Qazvin, Zanjan, Kordestan, Kermanshah, Lorestan, Esfahan, Charmahal va Bakhtiari, Kohkiluyeh va Boyer-Ahmad, Khuzestan, Fars, Yazd, Kerman, Bushehr, Hormozgan and Sistan va Baluchestan, collected between 1.I to 17.XII on elevations from 0 to 3300 m.